


A Traveller Falters: the Cartography of Forgotten Countries

by katertotter



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom
Genre: Dark, Implied Relationships, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:41:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/308960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katertotter/pseuds/katertotter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This was for a friend, a long, long time ago, who requested "a broken-hearted, world-travelling Draco, with addiction problems, being pretentious". No. I'm not kidding. I have hilarious friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Traveller Falters: the Cartography of Forgotten Countries

i.  
That market in Rome had been the last of a line leading nowhere. He'd not realised he'd been walking at all.

 

ii.  
Realising it was a line was easier in retrospection, he thought, looking up between the beans and the asparagus. Across the market, he saw the tilt of a head that just by all reasoning and accountability for plausible happenings on random Tuesdays should not have been found among beans and asparagus. That was the sort of thing, he believed, that gave one perspective. Produce, that is.

He briefly stopped squeezing the leeks, and stared at the strawberry cart. He wondered just how much opium one would have to ingest to produce hallucinations after the fact.

How he'd ended up in Rome, he wasn't even sure. But he'd been there close to seven months now, and he wasn't altogether sure he could find his way back.

February was cold and fleeting in Amsterdam, and it was filled with colours he wasn't sure he'd ever heard before.

By June, a hollow heat hung inside the Paris flat, clinging to the wallpaper, and leaving a visible moisture that he watched roll down to the floorboards in fat droplets. A wave of red set across the sky each evening, but he never saw morning.

July, though, July brought a fleet of brightly coloured sails into the harbour at Alexandria. He would sit in the white high-backed chair he'd dragged in front of the terrace windows, nursing a hangover with a bottle of pills, and trading his wool for cooler cottons, as he watched the sails glide slowly up to the shore.

One in particular, a smallish boat with green sails, had come and gone almost daily through much of July. He'd liked that boat, for some reason. It reminded him of the field beyond the woods at home, before the poppies overtook it. Then, there was nothing but red as far as he could see. Or, maybe, the vegetable stands at the market, or the way the light tipped off the ocean at certain times of the evening.

It did not, he told himself, remind him of anything he'd rather forget. Nothing would force him to remember some things. He simply refused, and who was he to argue with himself? No, some things were better left buri--...forgotten.

 

iii.  
In August, he sailed on that boat with its green sails, eagerly paying the exorbitant amount that the man wanted to take him along.

He woke in Florence three days later. All he remembered of the trip was green. He'd taken something or other from his collection of bottles on the first night, to stop the queasiness he felt from the waves. Or so he told himself.

He vaguely recalled collapsing down on deck to stare up at those sails. His host had either been more than obliging to allow him to lie there, or had kept his bottles close enough by to ensure a steady supply of forgetfulness that, most likely, had been to the man's own benefit. He assumed it was the latter, by the looks of the fellow and the ache in his calves.

 

iv.  
Last night, he'd turned instinctively, and there, across the darkened street, something seemed familiar. He wasn't sure what; the crowd was too thick. But a warm, sticky swirling feeling had started low in his stomach, and he began to wish that he'd stayed inside his bottle. That was an altogether different sort of swirl.

He dropped his sackful of squash, pulling himself closer, and crawled as far inside his pea coat as possible. To strangers, he must've appeared completely insane, but he couldn't be bothered caring. Not to say that he bothered any other time. No. He only found the most direct route through the bins of cabbages and out to the square, turning left toward home and muttering to himself:

 _This isn't happening. This isn't happening. This really isn't happening. Not now._

 _Of course_ , his treacherous mind answered back. _You knew it would._

 

v.  
Night time in New Orleans was his favourite. The cicada-singing silence hung closely, fading across his already blurred vision.

He walked fast along the dark streets. It felt as far from home as he'd ever imagined a place could feel. Although, sometimes, sometimes it still felt close.

By December, every city had become the same to him. All loud music, and alcoholic drinks, and pretty girls and men. And, of course, the drugs. The glorious Muggle drugs.

Occasionally, he wondered if he would ever make it back to where he belonged. But he'd forgotten where that was anyhow, and had a vague suspicion that place had died. Among other things.

He tightened his arms around his black pea coat and stumbled a little quicker than usual. The weather in New Orleans had been most confusing for him. The unimaginable stickiness of summer had been covered by a bitter cold and by the frozen smells and sounds of the city. Their accents were foreign, and their food was foreign, and their beliefs were foreign, but he was the only foreigner there.

Sometimes in that city, the dead came out at night. It was a Thursday when he saw Harry Potter on Washington Avenue, in front of a hideous, turquoise, columned house. He was covered in blood, angry speckles all along the collar of his white shirt. He smiled, a cold and terrible smile. Harry asked Draco how he was, and did he miss him, and did he remember Galway? Something had happened there. That much Draco remembered. He didn't want to remember more than that. He didn't stop, and didn't regret it, either. Harry couldn't feel him now, anyhow, he thought, and he was so very cold.

As he turned the corner on Coliseum Street, he thought he heard Harry whistling _Dixie_.


End file.
